DUE TO A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, DON and EMILY SALIERS WILLNOTBE PERFORMING AT THE MICHIGAN FESTIVAL OF SACRED MUSIC on November 19-20.

Replacing them in the planned events:

November 19, 8:00 p.m. concert:
David LaMotte with Elden Kelly

David LaMotte is an award-winning songwriter and itinerant peace activist. A veteran of ten CDs and 2,000 concerts on four continents, he suspended his eighteen-year music career at its peak in 2008 to accept a Rotary World Peace Fellowship to study International Relations, Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. As part of that study, he also spent three months in rural Andhra Pradesh, India working with a Gandhian development organization.

In 2004, David and his wife Deanna founded PEG Partners, a small non-profit organization that supports schools and libraries in Guatemala. He continues to volunteer as the Program Director for PEG. He is also a consultant on Peace and Justice at the North Carolina Council of Churches. LaMotte serves on the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Committee, working with twelve people on three continents to determine the AFSC’s nomination each year.

LaMotte is a public speaker and workshop leader, offering Worldchanging 101 workshops around the world for more than a decade. Touring full-time for nearly two decades, LaMotte developed a large and loyal following around the world.

Elden Kelly impresses audiences with his ability to combine jazz with a broad range of music traditions.

His CD “1,000 Doors” is a compilation of original music settings for solo voice and guitar of the sacred writings of the Baha’i Faith. In Seven Days Magazine reviewer Dan Bolles says: “Kelly approaches his source material with humble reverence. Much like Sufjan Stevens’ …musical explorations of Christianity, Kelly is quietly awed by God’s grace. The result is an intimate collection of works that, whatever your religious inclinations or disinclinations, makes for a stirring listen…From opening invocation ‘The Word’ through the disc’s benediction, ‘The Seven Valleys,’ Kelly displays near blessed control of his abilities…His voice is … divinely inspired, and it can alternately raise gooseflesh and calm the wayward soul.”

Kelly accompanies himself with the glissentar, a 12-string fretless guitar. He also performs on the oud, a pear shaped, 13-stringed instrument of the Middle East. In addition to instrumental improvisation, Kelly works as a singer-songwriter, whose musical style blends middle-eastern influences with neo-classicism, jazz, and American roots music.